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I N  T H E  N I G H T  K I T C H E N

Measure twice, cut once



This is my latest thing from my figure drawing class. I think it's not bad. The arm in the front is a little goofy and don't even look at that hand but I think it looks okay. In the drawing class I took last fall we did mostly portraits. The teacher did bring in two nude models and we did a week or two of the figure and then went back to portraits. She gave us a good introduction to gesture drawing and proportion but I found the figure extremely difficult to draw. The woman that she brought in seemed fairly easy. I don't know if it's because we see so many naked women on such a regular basis in our culture or what but it seems more familiar to draw a woman. The man, on the other hand, I was hopeless at. I kept making him sort of hulking, broad-shouldered midget.

The biggest hurdle for me (and, I would imagine, for anyone learning to draw) is to learn to draw what is there, not what you see. Because what you see is often something completely different from what is there. It's what makes you want to draw the eyes too far up the head and draw the neck as two parallel lines. You know what a face looks like, after all, you don't even have to look at it to know. Except that you do. So, it's shutting off what I think must be the left side of the brain telling you to just get on with it and draw the circular head on a popsicle stick and instead relying on the part of your brain that wants to examine and process the lines and shapes. It's turning off the thing that told me "men are big and broad shouldered, much bigger than women" even though the guy I was drawing did not look like a midget troglodyte.

Back to my current class, beginning figure drawing.... I've been wanting to try and draw a man again as I've been really pleased with the work I've done so far. This class is a 12-week course and for the first four classes we had the same model -- a woman, petite and pretty, rather young, small boobs and a fine form. While it was fun drawing her, it was getting a bit boring. I missed one class and in the next class asked one of the older gents what we did in the last one. I asked if we had a different model. We did. I then asked if it was a guy and they both recoiled and said, "Oh no!" Then one of them asked, "Will we be getting men in this class?" like there was some sort of regulation. I just don't understand that at all. There's probably about thirty seconds in that first class after your first model disrobes that you're like "whoa...nekkid" and then that just goes away. In fact, sometimes I get so involved in drawing that I get completely pulled out of the situation and I have to sit and think about how weird and surreal it is to have someone sit, nude, stock-still while I internally measure and whinge and debate and measure again the angle of their knee.

So, backing up again to that first drawing class I took when we had our first male, nude model (the strange beast in my interpretation). As I walked around the classroom toward the end of the session to see what people had come up with I noticed that not a single person had drawn the penis. I hadn't either as I was so frustrated trying to make sense of the figure that I ended up drawing just a portion, the shoulder and neck. Others had done the same and some positioned themselves in such as way as to see none of the penis. And a few just left an open blank spot where a penis would go. One guy had, clearly frustrated, drawn a frowny face where the man's face should have been. I told him that his drawing of the model would look more cheerful if he had given him a penis. I just found that so strangely amusing that a group of people in a drawing class faced with a nude model -- just as nude as the other model had been -- would draw everything but the thing which makes the real difference between the male model and the female model.

The penis. The penis must be drawn. But, how to draw the penis? Especially as, when it comes to the penis, your left brain seems very interested in just "getting it over with" and inserting some sort of crude, elementary-school style of penis of parallel lines with a circle on the end. But, well, you just have to do it. I was very impressed in my current class of figure drawers that no one shied away from it, not even the two shocked gentlemen who seemed so averse to the idea. Should you ever be faced with such a situation, one piece of advice: I caution you not to spend too much time internally measuring, whinging, debating and measuring again the angle of the penis or the length of said penis in relation to the width of the wrist -- because you might get the giggles and that's just not right.

10:30 AM link

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Keeping up appearances

Somebody who lives in the attached duplex, well, I'd call him my neighbor but he doesn't seem to always live there. Just sometimes. Anyway, he's here often enough that we wave at him though I don't think we've ever spoken beyond a "hello." He has a metallic blue, probably mid-90s, Pathfinder. One of those smallish SUV things. And twice a week, he's out there washing and polishing the thing. I've never seen a speck of dirt on it.

On the other side of them, in the next duplex (actually like a quadplex), lives a very old man and his patient wife. He works on cars. He finds these junkers, makes them run again and then tries to sell them. He had a horrifyingly-rusted El Camino that he sold for $100. In addition to a bashed-up truck and several tarp-covered parts they have a broken down Jacuzzi tub tucked alongside the plex. Anyway, the wife has planted rose bushes all along the front of their rented abode. She is still tending to them though the weather has turned cold and there are only a few beautiful blossoms left.

Across the street, an old lady in a really ugly house goes out and combs her rock garden. Instead of living with an unruly lawn she has planted four or five islands, each containing one, single plant or small tree and then trapped them with lava rock. Lava rock from the street to the door. It's so ugly and harsh-looking but apparently even the rocks get out of place and I see her out there with a rake, pushing them around.

11:35 AM link

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